Monday, 27 May 2013

SusChem: ready and set for Horizon 2020

The
clear message from the SusChem Stakeholder event that took place in Brussels on
14 and 15 May is that the Technology Platform is already working to
engage with Horizon 2020 – the European Commission’s next major Research and
Innovation Framework Programme. Over the past year SusChem stakeholders have
been contributing to the development and launch of a range of
exciting European initiatives that can help stimulate competitiveness, growth
and jobs in the European Union. SusChem looks forward to continuing to support
the European chemical, industrial biotechnology and process communities in
pursuit of sustainability and competitiveness as a ‘model’ ETP 2020.

Welcoming almost 200 delegates on the first day
Dr Klaus Sommer of Bayer Technology Services and Chairman of the SusChem
Board outlined SusChem’s achievements over the year and the challenges it faced
in the near future.

This widespread
involvement not only showed the critical role of sustainable chemistry in many
key areas but also the value of SusChem to the successful implementation of
Horizon 2020. Dr. Sommer noted that added value proposals from SusChem were
found in 30% of NMP calls in 2007-2011 for FP7 and there was a very high
participation in FP7 from SusChem members.

The methodology and outcomes of the F3 Factory is of great interest to the SusChem community and the wider chemical
and process industries as we enter Horizon 2020. In essence the project
demonstrated that large-scale collaborative projects involving multiple large
industrial enterprises can be successfully run in a pre-competitive environment
and demonstrated that ideas can be quickly moved from laboratory to
demonstration stage.

Further details of specific case
studies will be released over the summer but the potential impact of the
project is clearly huge. For example analysis of preliminary results show that
capital expenditure can be reduced by up to 40% by implementing F3 Factory
results. According to Cefic facts and figures capital expenditure in the
chemical industry in western Europe (EU-15 plus Norway and Switzerland) alone was US$ 50.4 billion (€39 billion) in 2011.

EU
Industrial Policy

A series of presentations relating
to EU industrial and research policies followed Klaus Sommer’s opening presentation. Bonifacio García-Porras from the
European Commission DG Industry and Entrepreneurship gave an overview of Industrial Policy in particular the Task Force on Advanced Manufacturing. The priorities of the task force were chosen in terms of the
impact they could have on the current economic crisis.

Paul Rübig MEP (above) made the case for
growing the manufacturing base in Europe. He stated that
an additional target should be added to the EU 20-20-20 target – to boost the
industrial manufacturing contribution to the EU’s GDP to 20%. He called for new ideas from business
to stimulate policy and politicians to create jobs and growth as well as
protect our environment.

Waldemar Kütt from the Cabinet of MáireGeoghegan-Quinn Commissioner for Research,Innovation and Science also talked about the economic crisis, Horizon 2020 and
the need to invest, reform, and transform to maintain
and enhance the EU’s competitive position. He argued that the need to produce
more with less required innovation – and SPIRE would be a great help here.

Some of the research policy
priorities of the Lithuanian Presidency of the EU were outlined by Osvaldas
Šmitas from the Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the EU. Lithuania will hold the presidency of EU in the
second half of 2013 and the work of the Competitiveness Council will be an essential
priority.

The view of a successful SME was
given by SusChem board member Fernando Moreno of Solutex. Fernando believes that there is an urgent need for a policy of reindustrialisation based on knowledge in Europe. He stated that a
strong SusChem ETP can help as an extraordinary tool to enable SMEs to rise to a high
innovation level.

Debate in the Valley of Death

The afternoon was concluded by a panel debate involving figures from the
European Commission, Industry and Academia moderated by Tim Reynolds of Inta Communication
Ltd. Tim is editor of the SusChem News blog.

The debate ranged widely over issues such as perceived skills gaps, our
perceptions of the innovation problem and society’s view of risk and benefit
balance in terms of innovation. A range of views and inputs came from the
audience too.

Networking cocktails

An evening cocktail reception concluded the first day of the stakeholder
event. Over drinks and canapés delegates heard from Edit Herczog, MEP, (pictured below) who
praised the economic and environmental record of the chemical and process
industries in the European Parliament but called on the chemistry community to
put more “fizz” in their communications and engage more with society and
citizens.

Andreas Förster, Managing Director Process Net DECHEMA and a
representative of SusChem National Technology Platforms (NTPs) concluded the
formal presentations with a discussion of the role of NTPs into the future.

Day
2: Horizon 2020, PPPs, Education

At the start of day two Ron Weerdmeester of PNO Consultants took
the audience through what is known about Horizon 2020, the likely timetable to
the launch of the programme in January 2014 and how SusChem would be supporting
consortium building.

To support brokerage for
the initial Horizon 2020 calls SusChem will look to provide a three step
process: Defining strategic SusChem innovations via SPIRE and BRIDGE PPPs and
other road mapping initiatives, stimulating project generation including the
use of SusChem webinars to inform stakeholders on calls and possible areas of
interest, and full brokerage and proactive project follow-up. A first SusChem
Horizon 2020 Brokerage event would be organised during Q4 2013 when the final
timetable for the launch and initial calls was known.

BRIDGE and SPIRE

A joint presentation by
the two SusChem-inspired PPPs: SPIRE and BRIDGE highlighted the complementary
nature of these important innovation initiatives and their synergies.

Joanna Dupont-Inglis
from EuropaBio (pictured below left with fellow presenters Christophe Luguel of IAR, Loredana Ghinea of A.SPIRE and Pádraig Naughton from Cefic) stated that the main objective of BRIDGE was to effectively
create value from waste and to develop a competitive biobased economy that has clear
benefits for rural and underdeveloped areas of Europe.

A number of the value
chain programmes would benefit from SPIRE activities and, similarly,
developments in the availability of biobased feedstock was a key outcome from
BRIDGE that would influence SPIRE. The PPPs have areas of common interest that
may even result in joint calls and both have synergies with other EIPs and PPP initiatives in the SusChem portfolio and
beyond.

Clearly the two PPPs are
working closely together for mutual benefit. Developments pioneered by SusChem
like the modular, low impact process systems coming out of the F3 Factory
project are providing common foundations for success for SPIRE and BRIDGE.

EIP initiatives

Parallel sessions on other European initiatives also showed the
tremendous amount of work going on across a range of societal challenge areas
in preparation for Horizon 2020.

The session on Water was let by Gernot Klotz of
Cefic and focused on advances in the ChemWater and E4Water FP7 projects that
are contributing to fulfilling a number of the EIP on Water’s objectives. A key
issue is how to replicate and deploy best practise and most appropriate
technologies in water management across European manufacturing. There
is a need to combat risk adversity and ensure that a clear direction is
established to ensure actions now.

Robert Schröder from the European Commission discussed
progress in the EIP. Its main aims are to identify barriers and develop policy
recommendations while developing concrete and useful tools such as an online
market place to be launched in August. Proposals for some 64 actions groups had
been received and were being analysed. The EIP will hold its annual conference in
November.

Renata Koerfer described the ChemWater FP7 project
that is creating synergies between process industry and water industry. Its
fifth workshop will be held on September 3 in Stockholm
during World Water Week. Christina
Jungfer described the E4Water project that is looking at six case studies in the
chemical process industry with the overall idea to link tools and expected
impact.

The session on Raw Materials was led by Antonia Morales of Cefic. This
is a critical area for Europe
as the EU is very dependent on raw materials. SusChem is working with the EIP on Raw
Materials with the aim of removing barriers to innovation in this last area. The
EIP seeks to reduce the import dependency of the EU on raw materials and a Strategic
Implementation Plan (SIP) will be finalised in June and should be approved by the end of the year.

The session on Materials Technologies and SmartCities
was led by Jacques Komornicki of Cefic. The workshop discussed the revised
priorities for Materials Technology in Horizon 2020 and the EIP on SmartCities
and Communities. The focus of discussion was on two recent reports: a SusChem
Materials Working Group document proposing a number of priority topics for
early Horizon 2020 calls and a SusChem / Cefic report highlighting currently
available ‘Innovative Chemistry for Energy Efficiency of Buildings in SmartCities’.

Education:
key factor

Concluding this year’s stakeholder
event presentations, the Educate to Innovate project described progress in this
initiative to use outcomes from FP7 projects – in particular the F3 Factory – to inform higher education.

Michaël Matlosz of University of
Lorraine talked about the need to ensure students
obtained a skill set that was appropriate for a more innovative and
entrepreneurial work force. A pilot project
was being undertaken with the F3 Factory project. This was a very
bottom-up approach working with selected teaching staff from European
universities to ‘show and tell’ the sort of knowledge and experience coming out
of an FP7 project and see what they thought could be usefully adapted for
student content.

Sue Fleet of Britest Ltd gave an overview of a
recent two-day industry / academic meeting and workshop at the INVITE facility in Leverkusen with twenty “hand picked” teaching academics. The exercise had been very
fruitful with the academics evaluating F3 Factory innovation themes and identifying
suitable targets for translation into learning resources for specific academic
outcomes. The project was now developing flexible and exciting learning
resources that will be rich in content and easily accessible.

Summing up the Eleventh SusChem
Stakeholder event Gernot Klotz of Cefic described SusChem as the “best
technology platform in Europe” and looking at
what has already been achieved and what the platform is planned for the future
it would be hard to disagree!